Battle at the Box Office 7/23

Sequels dominated the weekend box office, with 8 of the top 10 being a sequel in a franchise, the most ever in box office history.

The Equalizer 2 managed to just eke out Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, taking in $35.8 million, up about $1 million from the first Equalizer.  It’s the third best opening ever for Denzel, behind American Gangster and Safe House and the best opening ever for director Antoine Fuqua.

Mamma Mia took in $34.4 million, up about $7 million from its predecessor’s opening of $27.7 million its opening weekend 10 years ago in 2008 and it’s the fourth largest musical opening of all time.  Internationally, Mamma Mia 2 took in $42.4 million, making it’s grand total $76.7 million. It could potentially hold well in the next few weeks as it’s targeted mainly at female audience and it got a solid Cinemascore reception of an A-.

Hotel Transylvania 3 dropped to third with another $23.1 million, bringing it to just over $91 million for its two weeks out.  It’s made over $206 million worldwide so far.

Ant-Man and The Wasp and Incredibles 2 rounded out the top 5, with the latter now grossing over $557 million domestically and over $941 million worldwide.  Ant-Man and The Wasp has made just shy of $165 million for its three weeks out.

Further down the list, Skyscraper took a pretty massive tumble, losing 56% of its take and dropping from third to seventh with $10.9 million.  It’s made $46 million so far domestically plus another $135.7 million worldwide.

Unfriended: Dark Web, debuted in ninth place with $3.5 million.  Normally that would be a disaster but this is Blumhouse we’re talking about so that is already triple its budget back but it’s way off from the opening of the first Unfriended, which made $15 million its opening back in 2015.  It is the fifth best opening for Blumhouse’s “BH Tilt” arm, between The Green Inferno and Birth of the Dragon.